On 30 April 2026 the Crime and Policing Act received Royal Assent. Seventy new measures. Respect orders that ban repeat offenders from town centres. A specific offence for assaulting retail workers. The most significant changes to knife crime law since 2015. Ministers are calling it a major overhaul. And none of it — not one clause of it — will mean anything until Britain ends the two-tier policing that has destroyed public confidence in our justice system.

You can pass any number of laws. You can invent any number of new orders. The question that matters is the one Labour will not answer: will those laws be applied to everybody, or only to some people?

Seventy New Powers Without the Will to Use Them

Britain is not short of laws. We are not short of police powers. We were not, even before this Act, short of offences with which to charge violent thugs, organised shoplifting gangs, knife criminals, or people who attack shopworkers. What we have been short of is the political will to enforce the laws we already had.

Shoplifting under £200 was, for years, treated as effectively decriminalised. High streets across this country watched their independent shops close because the police would not turn up. Now Labour wants applause for inventing a brand-new offence to deal with the consequences of an enforcement collapse it never reversed.

If the existing law on assault, theft, and criminal damage had been enforced, the Crime and Policing Act 2026 would not have been needed. Adding a 71st power on top of seventy that already exist is what you do when you can't admit the existing ones aren't being used.

Respect Orders for Whom?

One of the centrepieces of the Act is the "respect order" — a power for police to ban repeat offenders from specific locations like town centres. On paper, sensible. In practice, the question every British voter will ask is: which offenders, and which town centres?

We have all seen the footage by now. Mass disorder treated as a peaceful gathering when the protest is the right shape. A grandmother arrested for a tweet. A man fined for "non-crime hate" for praying silently outside an abortion clinic. Two-tier policing isn't a Reform UK slogan. It is the daily lived experience of British people who can read a charge sheet.

A respect order applied evenly across the country, banning persistent shoplifters from the high street and persistent thugs from the bus station, is a good idea. A respect order applied selectively, banning some communities while ignoring others, will pour petrol on a fire that is already burning.

The Knife Crime Clauses Will Save Lives — If They're Enforced

The new offence of carrying a knife with intent to injure is the most significant change to knife crime law since 2015. It deserves to be welcomed. Knife crime is murdering British teenagers in their dozens, in cities ministers visit for photo opportunities and then abandon. A tougher law is the right answer. The question is whether the courts will impose the sentences and whether the Prison Service has the capacity to hold the offenders.

Britain's prisons are full. The previous Conservative government opened the floodgates with early release. Labour expanded it. We have the toughest knife crime law on the statute book in a decade, and a prison estate that cannot house the people the law is supposed to remove from circulation.

That is not a policing problem. It is a political problem. A government that refuses to build prisons, refuses to deport foreign nationals taking up cell space, and refuses to keep dangerous offenders inside for the full term of their sentence is a government that has decided protecting the public is somebody else's responsibility.

What Reform UK Would Do

Reform UK would do three things the Crime and Policing Act 2026 won't.

First, end two-tier policing in law and in practice. One standard. One law. One enforcement regime. Every British citizen treated the same — whatever they look like, whatever they believe, whatever flag they wave or don't wave.

Second, give the police the backing to do the basics. Visible patrols. Investigations of every reported burglary and theft. An end to the absurd situation where neighbourhood policing has been gutted to fund online speech monitoring.

Third, build the prison places. Deport every foreign national serving a sentence. Restore proper sentencing — life means life for the worst offenders, and minimum tariffs for knife and violent crime that the courts cannot undercut.

None of this requires a new Act. It requires a government willing to enforce the law we have. Until that government exists, the Crime and Policing Act 2026 will be just another stack of paper on the shelf — read out at press conferences, ignored on the street.